


Thirteen Seconds

by Marvels



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Captain Swan January Joy, F/M, Fluff, New Year's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9258023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvels/pseuds/Marvels
Summary: "I hate you, but we kissed at midnight on New Year's and now I can't stop thinking about it" AU for Day 8 of Captain Swan January Joy!





	

Emma Swan was not into Killian Jones.

She didn’t like his swagger, didn’t fall into his crystalline blue eyes, didn’t giggle in response to his jabs.

And she certainly, one-hundred-percent, did _not_ want to kiss him at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.

“Listen, love, you and I are the only two at the party without a partner,” Killian drawled, his sweet, Irish accent slurred slightly by the rum. They were seated together on the couch in Mary Margaret’s apartment, so close that every movement seemed to result in their brushing up against one another.

“And you’re buddy-buddy with my fuckin’ awful ex,” Emma spat back. “So it looks like we’re going to stay that way.”

“Swan,” Killian whined, his voice gravelly and petulant. He threw an arm up onto the back of the couch so that it encircled her shoulders. “How many times do I have to atone for believing that Neal was a good man?”

“Keep atoning. I’ll let you know when I’ve had enough,” Emma said, sliding out from under his arm on the couch, putting a foot of space between them. Killian’s shoulders sagged a little at her retort, and he almost looked pitiful enough for Emma to reclaim the empty space on the couch. Almost.

“Swan,” Killian began again, breathing deeply. “I apologize for my grievous error. I should not have supported the claims of Neal Cassidy on blind faith in the decency of his character. You deserve better than that wretched scab, and I take some solace in believing that you know that now.”

Emma took a moment to consider the apology.

“Not bad,” she conceded. He brightened incrementally at her concession, enough to make her laugh aloud before she could restrain herself.

“And I really do mean it, Swan,” Killian said earnestly, his eyes searching hers for forgiveness. “He’s a bloody wank and never deserved the likes of you to begin with.” There was no lie in his voice, Emma realized slowly.

_Careful, Emma. You don’t like him. He’s one of Neal’s._

“Well, thanks,” she said in spite of herself. He brightened under her passive expression.

“Can I get you another drink?” He asked her cautiously, nodding towards the empty glass in her hands. He was holding one to match, and against her better judgment, Emma relented with a nod.

“Back in a tick, then,” he said. With no shortage of flourish, Killian slid off the couch and over towards the direction of the kitchen. Emma took a moment to stare dully at her hands in her lap, trying to let their conversation sink in.

“I see you’ve made nice with Killian, then,” a voice said from over her shoulder.

“Five minutes without you watching or commenting on my interactions, Mary Margaret, that’s literally all I ask,” Emma responded grumpily, her head tilting back a little towards her friend, but her eyes continuing to track the lines of her hands in her lap.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Mary Margaret sang back. Emma could practically feel her friend’s smug smile burning into the top of her head.

“We didn’t make nice. He just apologized, as he should have,” Emma replied tartly.

“When are you going to give that poor man a chance, Ems? He’s apologized every time you’ve been in the same room together since things went south with Neal.” David had turned up behind the couch as well, and Emma continued to fume at her hands until she couldn’t anymore.

“First of all, I don’t ever have to give him a chance, he backed Neal, I don’t care how often he apologizes,” Emma snapped, finally whipping around to face her two goofily smiling friends. “And second, even if I did want to, you’re killing my fucking mood with all this _hovering_.”

“Damn, Emma, no need to be like that,” David slurred slightly, grinning broadly and taking her wrath entirely in stride. “We’ll make like a you after a one night stand and just ghost the fuck out, then.”

Emma hardly had the time to register what he’d said before he and Mary Margaret had merged back into the small throng of people gathering in front of the big TV in their living room.

“What was that I heard about a one night stand, love?”

Emma whipped back around and found Killian perched comfortably at her arm with a couple of filled glasses and a smirk.

“Oh just shut up. Please,” Emma asked, her voice more a whine than a command. She was surprised when he acquiesced quietly, their fingers brushing as he passed her one of the glasses. Something caught in her throat when his hand remained on hers even when she had a secure grip on the glass.

“Emma Swan, your hands are absolutely freezing,” Killian commented pleasantly. Emma felt her eyes widen as her mind scrambled for some sort of appropriate response.

“Well, my last rum and coke had too much ice in it,” she said. She swirled her current glass before raising an eyebrow at Killian in approval. “I see that’s been amended.”

Killian gave a fake bow, switching his glass from his prosthetic left hand to his flesh-and bone right, and swirled his left animatedly in front of him, as if royalty. She huffed and rolled her eyes, trying not to smile.

Her restrained smile diminished slightly as she thought back to what David had asked. _When are you going to give that poor man a chance?_ _He’s apologized every time you’ve been in the same room together since things went south with Neal._

“Penny for your thoughts, love?” Killian was bending forward a little bit, eyebrows slightly furrowed, fingers skirting absently over her knees. Emma shook her head abruptly, smiling tensely.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I don’t know what you-“

“You’re way too polite to me, even though I’ve been an ass to you.” Emma said, pouting slightly in confusion. Killian gnawed on his lower lip, so pleasingly plump and pink under the row of his white front teeth.

“Well, you’ve no reason to be kind to me. I deserve your derision, your mistrust, your anger. I made a poor decision, and that’s all you know of me. I apologize every time I see you, because I hope that someday, somehow, my apology can help you heal, since I’m sure my ass of an ex-friend never told you that he was sorry.”

Whatever Emma had expected him to say, it hadn’t been that. She gaped like a fish, fairly positive that her jaw was just hanging there, unhinged. Dimly, she heard people counting down in room behind her. But all she saw was the luminescent blue of his eyes, and all she could feel was the running of his fingers across the angles of her knees.

All she wanted to taste was the lingering rum on his tongue.

So she did.

Dropping her drink to the table, she wrapped both hands around Killian’s jaw, pulling his lips into her own, their front teeth clicking against each other slightly as they adjusted to the shape of the other’s mouth. Then, slowly, gently, he began to reciprocate the motion, his polymer hand resting on her upper arm while his real hand combed through her hair, just above her ear. He bit gently on her lower lip, and Emma could feel his smile against her mouth as she groaned quietly.

His fingers scrunched against her hair, and while she was drinking in the pleasantly foggy taste of rum on his tongue, a noise erupted behind them. Emma started, but Hook’s hand wrapped along the back of her skull, and he pressed the kiss into her mouth for just a tick longer before pulling away.

“Happy New Year, love,” Killian said sheepishly. Emma stared at him, her shock mirrored in his expression. Suddenly frantic, she looked over to where Mary Margaret and David were standing. They were grinning at her with all the wolfish glee she had hoped to avoid.

“Aw, fuck.”

The words slipped out of her mouth before she realized what she had said, and her eyes flicked back to Killian, suddenly self conscious.

“Admittedly, not the words I’d hoped to hear from your mouth after our first kiss,” Killian admitted, a pretty blush creeping across his cheeks.

“And admittedly, I never meant to kiss you,” Emma replied, flustered. She immediately began gathering up her things, her phone and her jacket, namely, for the two-block walk home. She spared a glance at Killian, who was watching her, still frozen on the couch. “Sorry. What I meant to say was, thanks for being considerate about my feelings, but you don’t need to do that anymore.”

“Swan,” Killian started. Emma just shook her hair out of the collar of her coat. She couldn’t meet his gaze. If she had, she might have seen the look of wonderment slowly giving out to guarded disappointment.

“Don’t. I’m sorry Killian. Enjoy the rest of the party,” Emma said quickly, quietly.

She was gone before he could reply. 

* * *

Emma Swan was not into Killian Jones.

She didn’t spend the first two weeks of the New Year thinking about him to a practically hazardous extent.

She most definitely wasn’t thinking about him when her bail-jumping mark got the slip on her and knocked her down the front steps of a coffee shop, spraining her wrist, skinning her hands, and bruising her ego.

When she returned to her boss in the early afternoon, sheepish and empty-handed, he gave her a disparaging look, a sigh, and the rest of the day off to “rest up and get refocused for Monday.” It was probably more than she deserved. 

Feeling rather dejected, Emma decided to head to the bar down the street from her place rather than head home for her night of self-pity and self-medication. Maybe she was hoping to distract her mind’s eye from its fixation on Killian, the fixation that had caused her to lose focus on the case today when she thought she saw him across the street.

Sighing heavily, Emma pushed her way through the solid wood doors at Hatter’s. The crowd there was usually a little too rough for Mary Margaret and David to join her, and she hoped that the distance would help ease her current state of unbalance.

Emma sat down at a well-worn barstool with a grimace and quietly ordered two fingers of whiskey, neat. Tequila was for parties, vodka was for mourning, and rum… she was swearing off the stuff, for the time being. 

“I’ll have what the lass is having,” a painfully familiar, and painfully cheerful voice sounded off next to her.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Emma whispered, her voice barely forming around the lump that had suddenly arisen in her throat.

“Ah, drinking to forget then, are we, Swan?” Killian’s blue eyes and indomitable smile were too close, the smell of his cologne entrancing.

“I didn’t… the kiss was just for midnight, Killian, it didn’t mean anything,” Emma forced the words out at an unsteady tempo, and a strange flurry of uncertainty tossed in her stomach. _She wasn’t lying. She didn’t like Killian Jones._

“Aye, sure you didn’t, love. I’m sure that why you decided to kiss me quick and get it over with,” a conspicuous smirk rose to grace his expression. “I’m sure that’s why you started kissing me when the countdown to midnight was still at thirteen seconds then, eh?” 

Emma stared at him, slack-jawed. He picked up his drink, which the bartender had brought during his analysis,  and started swirling it around with unnecessary focus.

“I…” Emma found herself in the strangely unique situation of being genuinely lost for words. Killian’s bravado seemed to evaporate a bit, and he reached out with his real hand, his fingers finding a stray hair of her’s and tucking it gently behind her ear.

“I like you a lot, Emma,” he started quietly. “I’m really quite taken with you. And I understand if our mutual history with Neal means that I’ll never get to show you how much I care.” His eyes searched hers for a moment or two, and she struggled to maintain a passive expression.

His gaze then flicked down to his lap, and then to hers, where her hands were cradled numbly, palms up to spare the tender skin. With narrowed eyes and not even a word, his hands moved to tenderly examine the scratches on the heels of her hands, and the swollen bruising of her left wrist.

“I-I just got taken by surprise today, by a bail jumper I was trying to catch,” she explained, feeling oddly tense regarding his concerned scrutiny. He knew a general amount about her line of work, knew it was rough. This couldn’t be a surprise for him.

“Must have taken something to get a jump on you, Swan,” Killian said lightly. The previous topic of conversation was still hanging heavily in the air, and Emma sighed.

There was an escape route here. She could laugh, pay for her drink, and tell him she’d catch him later, even though she wouldn’t. Or there was honesty. To be true, that was the scarier option. Glancing up at the kind expression in his eyes, she breathed deeply before smiling.

“Yeah. You.” Killian jerked back a little in surprise. 

“What?” 

“You. I was thinking about you. I thought I saw you across the street and I let myself get distracted. All the while my bail jumper was putting the pieces together. Pushed me down some stairs. It really did take _something_ ,” she laughed breathily, her fingers curling into her palms as she tried to withdraw her hands from his grasp. He held fast, his expression distantly stunned.

“You were… thinking about me?” He asked weakly. Emma began to wonder if she’d made the wrong decision, if there was time to hide this under a deprecating lie and bolt. But she steeled herself, breathing in and out through her nose in a half-hearted attempt to re-center herself. 

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about you for a couple of weeks now. I’m… I think I like you too, and I think that scares me. But not enough that I want to stay away.” Emma said quietly. She then watched as Killian’s expression bloomed into one of sheer delight.

“I knew you’d take a shine to me, Swan,” he grinned.

“Don’t make me regret giving you a chance, Killian,” she shot back in an instant. He just smiled more broadly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, love.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Captain Swan fic, and I'd love to write more. Always feel free to send me prompts at finndameron on tumblr!


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